Children of Men

Barry

Padawan Learner
I have just returned from watching this movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/). Its been a while since a movie has hit me with such raw, uncompromising emotion. We need more movies like this.

It follows a similar theme to V for Vendetta, set also in Britain in the near future but much grittier than V. Again with the totalitarian regime in power and a destroyed world on the brink of dissolution into nothingness. In the movie, for some untold reason humans have lost the ability to procreate with women but there is a glimmer of hope when a worldwide resistance group called The Fishes find a young girl who has become pregnant. The regime controlling the UK/world have apparent little interest in finding a cure of humanity's dilemma, with their only aim to control those still alive. Although the plot is a little loose and head scratching in places, the important thing is the imagery. The photography is nothing short of fantastic and is filmed much the way Saving Private Ryan was, with the hand held camera following the characters round in a documentary kind of fashion. This makes it all the more real.

Highly recommended.
 
I didn't even know of this movie. It's released Dec. 25 in the US. How did you happen to see it now?
Gosh, they are really upping the negative future 'reality'. I wish I could get to some money.
We need to make images of a positive future, if only for sub-conscious reasons.

I'm really getting disgusted with all this dooms-day shit. Nothing is set in stone, if what we project in the
media can influence the future, then non-doomsday images need to made.

If this would make a difference, I don't factually know. But I'm getting sick of what the dominant culture is
programming for.

I can't believe there isn't someone on 'our' wavelength with access to Hollywood money that feels the same.
 
This reminds me off another movie "Aeon Flux" (not the MTV series) where there is only one society in a closed city where the ordinary people don't know that women no longer can get pregnant since many centuries. It's the government who secretly implants clones into the women (so they think they get pregnant).

But after a long time woman start to get pregnant again, but one psychopath of the government tries to kill all these women and genetically alters the people so that they won't get pregnant again. Because he doesn't want to loose his power over the people in the city.
 
I saw it last night and it is incredibly powerful and disturbing. The worst part of all is that much of the scenes from the refugee camp 'Bexhill' are straight out of occupied Palestine, complete with tanks in the streets, cold blooded massacre of civilians, and the feeling of impotent rage which fuels the uprising of the refugees. Perhaps the film-makers puposefully chose to show the arab residents of the camp matching through the streets with a dead body to illustrate this point, I'm not sure. I did see an interview in which the director explained that this is what the world is like NOW. It also has suggestions of government false-flag operations such as suicide bombings.
 
Joshua said:
I didn't even know of this movie. It's released Dec. 25 in the US. How did you happen to see it now?
Who knows why things schedule the way they do, could be distribution problems, could be that certain parties dont want the US public consciouness swayed in that direction at the moment, who knows. Its set in Britain, has mainly British actors etc - perhaps we just get first bite of the cherry for a change:)


Joshua said:
I can't believe there isn't someone on 'our' wavelength with access to Hollywood money that feels the same.
Perhaps there are, perhaps even someone who worked on this movie, you never know. You are never going to wake people up if you keep showing them all positive spin, feel safe, feel good crap imo. That just isnt a true reflection of humanity. You need to stare your reality in the face and acknowledge it for what it is, before you can do anything else, imo. Then your brain tries to forget, because it seems so horrible, so you look at it again, ang again and again until you come to as good an understanding of it as possible.

Indeed, nothing is set in stone, but you can work on probabilities and its probably correct that if we/humanity dont acknowledge the true picture of life on earth TODAY, we are going to be in the deepest of deep doo doo. Thats what PD James (the author of the book the movie came from)did, she took an objective look of the state of the world today, working on the probabilites of what future it could lead to - but there was a message of HOPE in it against such a terrible backdrop. A very moving one.

I suggest you watch the movie before passing comment on it being doomsday "shite", you may feel differently afterwards.
It certainly made me remember the task ahead of us.
 
Barry said:
Joshua said:
I didn't even know of this movie. It's released Dec. 25 in the US. How did you happen to see it now?
Who knows why things schedule the way they do, could be distribution problems, could be that certain parties dont want the US public consciouness swayed in that direction at the moment, who knows. Its set in Britain, has mainly British actors etc - perhaps we just get first bite of the cherry for a change:)


Joshua said:
I can't believe there isn't someone on 'our' wavelength with access to Hollywood money that feels the same.
Perhaps there are, perhaps even someone who worked on this movie, you never know. You are never going to wake people up if you keep showing them all positive spin, feel safe, feel good crap imo. That just isnt a true reflection of humanity. You need to stare your reality in the face and acknowledge it for what it is, before you can do anything else, imo. Then your brain tries to forget, because it seems so horrible, so you look at it again, ang again and again until you come to as good an understanding of it as possible.

Indeed, nothing is set in stone, but you can work on probabilities and its probably correct that if we/humanity dont acknowledge the true picture of life on earth TODAY, we are going to be in the deepest of deep doo doo. Thats what PD James (the author of the book the movie came from)did, she took an objective look of the state of the world today, working on the probabilites of what future it could lead to - but there was a message of HOPE in it against such a terrible backdrop. A very moving one.

I suggest you watch the movie before passing comment on it being doomsday "shite", you may feel differently afterwards.
It certainly made me remember the task ahead of us.
I must have not made myself clear. The movie looks great, and I didn't mean to imply it to be shite. I'll go see it the minute it comes out and I love Clive Owens

My point also wasn't for "feel good, postive spin" movies to be made from a false POV.

My point was that movies seem to be forecasting alot of doom and gloom for the future and an ugly picture of humanity in the future, which we all know very likely will be the case. This is subtle programming and will help
the future to be just that. The aforementioned programming is also a meme.

I personally know enough and have seen enough that I don't need anymore inputing and programming of
how ugly the future potentially is. It's ugly now, and I understand basically why that is the case.

The issue then becomes what are we going to do?

My desire is for an inspirational meme to come through. You are correct that I don't know about the message of HOPE in the movie, as I have't seen it. Point well taken!

The future is up to us. I'm not advocating sugar coating or running from what we all know is going on. But this works both ways. All the focus on this ugly future will only help bring it about. All the analysis brings knowledge yes, but then what?

Western Civ. is sick, it's patholocial and Owellian. Politics and business are completely corrupt. The ship is sinking.
Obviously this is a gross simplification, one that I'm comfortable with after years of study, deduction and reading
between the lines. Of which I'd not been able to do without the world class minds exhibited on this web site.

I mean in any reasonable word LKJ would be a Galactic Rhodes Scholar Extradinaire. She is. Her tenaciousness
and material produced is INCREDIBLE. I don't know how she does it. So please don't make the mistake of taking my
text as being critical of anyone's efforts at pointing out how the 'GeoFarcitical' works.

But really, it's no more complicated than my gross simplification. So, now what?

The one interesting thing about all the alt. news boards is that no one, not anywhere, including me advocates any ideas, about what to do about all this analysis. So....the analysis continues and things get worse, and the analysis contines etc. This is not to disrespect anyones intelligence or efforts on this site.

This is probably the best alt. news site on the whole WWW.

The "doo, doo" is here. That's what we all read about everyday on SOTT, and I'm grateful for all the hard work
that gets put into this site by it's owners. I mean look at the text they generate week in, week out. It's incredible.

But, I still am left with the fact that nothing will change until the whole thing, Western Industrial Culture- falls apart. Ok, then what?

There are inspiring stories, memes etc. that can take into account the basic reality that is consensus on this site
and inspire something that isn't the Children of Men narrative. This is said not in negation of said narrative only
in addition thereof.

That is my point.

Yet, as you pointed out, not having seen the film I can't know this to not be the case in Children of Men. I've only seen the Trailer and 'knee-jerked' on it.

Appreciate your input my friend, Barry.

Warmly,
Joshua
 
Personally, I loved the movie, there are so many people in England who believe the problem in Iraq and Palestine isn't "our" problem, it's out there somewhere and will just go away if we just ignore it.
Well, the movie really "brings the idea home" by showing London as the backdrop for the same horror going on in the Middle East, and it's pretty scary.
It reminded me of a Podcast I heard before about how lots of people in America think the slaughter going on is basically ok because they are targeting "Muslim Terrorists" and that the Government would never allow that kind of treatment on Americans, Big mistake! As they pointed out on the Podcast, all the PTB have to do is inspire hate with another label, instead of justifying murder with "You are an Islamic Fascist"; they can just use "You Communist" or "You Socialist" or whatever.
This movie really demonstrates this same point when it shows the Refugee camps with people of ALL nationalities and orientations in the camps, they even use the word "Fugee" to separate people into different social statuses, when there is basically no such thing! We are all immigrants and refugees if one goes back far enough.
The Pathocrats really don't care who you are, their war is on humanity, and a death for any human being is a casualty we need to mourn deeply over because we are all basically one family. The movie really captured this idea for me and won't be forgotten.
 
Barry said:
Who knows why things schedule the way they do, could be distribution problems, could be that certain parties dont want the US public consciouness swayed in that direction at the moment, who knows. Its set in Britain, has mainly British actors etc - perhaps we just get first bite of the cherry for a change:)
And the director is Mexican! ( like yours truly! ;-)

I just saw it on Friday evening. It was REALLY powerful. Much better than I expected. The message was not as clearly directly related to what we see happening in the world right now as "V" or "The Matrix", but the images of how a society in the not too distant future might look are VERY realistic and disturbing! And there are lots of small references to interesting possible futures often discussed in this forum.

The acting, the atmosphere, the long sequences of the scenes (without cutting), everything is very shocking and moving. Actually, I think I'd like to see it again.

I recommend it highly.
 
Set in Britian in 2027, the story follows one average joe named Theo. Going through his daily grind, attempting to live in a society that has gone fascist. Britain seems to be the last standing nation with any remnant of modernity while the rest of the world has succumbed to all sorts of collapse. Fugee's, or refugees come en masse, and are disposed of by the government through the use of death camps. The primary reason the world has collapsed is that for the last 18 years there hasn't been a single newborn.

Theo is contacted by his ex-wife who now works for the resistance (calling themselves Fish), she needs a favor, a fugee they rescued seems to have become pregnant and they need to get her out of the country to a group of scientists working on finding out why humanity stopped being able to have kids.

The story then follows as Theo, at first hesitant, ultimately aids getting Key (thas her name) out of the country.

I don't want to spoil it, but i'll say this: the movie is powerful. It uses extremely beautiful and violent imagery to present us a world that could very easily become our own. The actors are superb and the direction makes the movie come alive. I felt completely identified with the characters and their plight, and felt as if i was following them on their journey through hell.

I shed a few tears, not because the film was sad, but because the emotions i experienced during the film were so raw. Given the state of things one cannot help but fear the truth hidden in the film.

Overall highly reccomended.
 
Children of Men - Extremely Good Film

Cyre2067 said:
the movie is powerful. It uses extremely beautiful and violent imagery to present us a world that could very easily become our own.
[...]
I shed a few tears, not because the film was sad, but because the emotions i experienced during the film were so raw. Given the state of things one cannot help but fear the truth hidden in the film.
Same here - tears and all. The film was very powerful, and all I could think was: "this is the direction we're going," aside from the "infertility" thing (who knows, though, future is "open"). I cried because it reminded me so much of the images from Gaza and Lebanon...

The "police state" imagery reminded me of my conception of an ultra-ponerized nation and people: the in-difference of the "citizens" to literally hundreds of "illegal immigrants" being rounded up and put into cages right in front of their eyes was staggering, to say the least; people cried their heads off when the "world's youngest person" (become celebrity) died while their fellow countrymen were being rounded up like animals...

The contrast between sleek technology and utter chaos was powerful as well. One sees thin state-of-the-art LCD's all over the place (broadcasting propaganda and ads, of course), often hung on walls spattered with blood and riddled with bullet holes.

Also highly recommend the film.
 
Children of Men - Extremely Good Film

I'll third the recommendation. Everything said so far is right on. The direction, acting, writing, visuals, etc. are all stunning. The emotions are raw and moving. I have to say, the Mexican trio of directors all releasing amazing films in the last year was a pleasant surprise (Babel, Children of Men, and Pan's Labyrinth).

More on Children of Men: the writing is seamless. Cuaron and his team manage to get so much stuff through the 'censors' in a believable and 'unconspiratorial' way. Concepts hinted at or discussed in the film: false flag ops, population control, MI5 torture. There are even some great ponerological ideas that sneak in. Check it out.
 
Children of Men - Extremely Good Film

Same as above.
A movie to watch for sure.

Am I the only one to think that there is a Christian overtone in the movie ?
Altough it's twisted it in a more interesting way.

The name the "fishes" ?
The scene in the barn for example ?
The last scene where they leave on a boat ?
 
Children of Men - Extremely Good Film

Tigersoap said:
The name the "fishes" ?
The scene in the barn for example ?
The last scene where they leave on a boat ?
...I'll keep that in mind as I'll go see tonight.
 
Children of Men - Extremely Good Film

Tigersoap said:
Same as above.
A movie to watch for sure.

Am I the only one to think that there is a Christian overtone in the movie ?
Altough it's twisted it in a more interesting way.

The name the "fishes" ?
The scene in the barn for example ?
The last scene where they leave on a boat ?
Yeah, there's Christian imagery/symbolism, but if my high school English classes taught me anything it's that you don't need to be Christian to effectively use its symbols (e.g. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok). Key, in the movie, even cracks a joke about being a virgin. ;)
 
Children of Men - Extremely Good Film

hkoehli said:
Yeah, there's Christian imagery/symbolism, but if my high school English classes taught me anything it's that you don't need to be Christian to effectively use its symbols (e.g. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok). Key, in the movie, even cracks a joke about being a virgin. ;)
Yup sure.
I thought it was interesting nonetheless and I'd be curious to know why Cuaron included this symbolism in his movie.
I wasn't bothered by it because it wasn't sugar coated though, that's what I liked also, when Key made the joke.
 
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